"I'm just as blown away by this as everybody else," she said, then hung up.

In a six-page filing in Cook County Circuit Court, she said the couple has irreconcilable differences. She listed her occupation as housewife and said she lacks income to support herself or pay for attorney's fees.

The couple married in 1955 in Rossville, Ga., according to the filing.

In January, the 68-year-old Stonecipher began an affair with a female executive, according to the company. When an employee intercepted correspondence between the two and told non-executive chairman Lewis Platt and the company's top ethics officer, the board confronted Stonecipher, and he admitted the relationship.

Platt said last week that Stonecipher's conduct raised questions about his judgment and had the potential to embarrass the company. That violated Boeing's code of conduct, which Stonecipher has championed amid the company's ongoing defense contracting scandal.

The affair "would impair his ability to lead the company going forward," Platt explained. "It was a judgment call about a violation of the code of conduct."

On Thursday, the same day the divorce papers were filed, Boeing disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission that Stonecipher would receive the $2.1 million bonus he had earned in 2004.

He also will be paid through his official retirement date of April 1 at an annual rate of $1.5 million, the same rate he was paid before the scandal.

But he has been removed from the 2005 incentive bonus pool and will lose all employee benefits and other perquisites once he retires, the filing said. Those include a company car and financial counseling.